E-book library is a trending way to read books online for cheap. One such option for medical students is Thieme E-Book Library. I had got a trial version Thieme E-Book Library by the Thieme Publishers.
To enter the e-book library, either you can have your personal login credentials or via institutional login where if your institute has the subscription, you will be able to login directly. The library has 111 eBooks at the time of writing this article. Books are from a variety of subjects, author, and topics.
There are multiple ways to read the eBooks. On the desktop browser, as a desktop app, android app or on the tablet. The desktop app is an Adobe AIR application which is similar to browser version and a waste of time as it does not offer any extra feature other than an ability to download the books in the app. This is a big negative side as nothing matches the ease of reading books in PDF versions of Adobe Reader. This is probably to prevent copyright violation and illegal distribution of the books. But at least the reader should be like a typical PDF reader for convenience.
I was not able to see all the books in the online library. Some books which I did not find where Atlas of Anatomy, Textbooks of Obstetrics etc.
Still, it is very useful to have such a big database of ebooks available online. Those who are interested in reading the books online can do it via the link below to get a trial access to the library.
Click here to request a trial version of the Thieme E-Book Library
Update (09/10/2017):
Following is the reply I got from Thieme Publishers after they read the points mentioned by me in the above review.
1. Desktop App: As pointed out by you, the desktop application (iPublishCentral) helps us preventing copyright violation and illegal distribution of ebooks which only benefits the publishers/owner of the content. On the other hand, the application also offers advanced features to readers/users as mentioned below;
a. Search within the book
b. Add bookmarks
c. Highlight text
d. Add/view notes
e. Copy and print content directly
f. Download related media
The benefits to institutions/libraries it serves is by generating usage/activity reports.
2. Missing books: The reason you were not able to see Atlas of Anatomy book on the platform is that it is offered as an ‘add-on’ only to the institutions where the book is adopted in their course.
Further, we have not added textbooks published in India like ‘Essentials of obstetrics’ as this platform is owned by our New York office and we are making efforts to integrate our books on all the online platforms of Thieme Publishers.
